Love versus fear

This
morning I woke up and made breakfast for my daughter, and thought to myself: we
have entered the age of terror.

Terror
is not new to the USA. Terror—the infliction of extreme fear—runs
deep in our economy and political system, from the enslavement of African
people to the genocide of Native people to violent oppression of any Americans
not defined as white. Terror is not new to US action around the globe, where
our tax dollars have long underwritten war and brutal repression.

But
today terror has become the explicit and recognized force dominating public
thought and action. In horrific ways the Right has legitimized terror, as we
saw in the shameful responses of Republicans after a man opened
fire in the deadly Planned Parenthood shooting. Terror—by white
supremacists, by extremist fundamentalists, or by police—now dominates
our political landscape.

Today, through consumption, complicity, and silence, our country
has helped create an unprecedented level of desperation and disruption within
our own communities and around the world. We live in a world of ecosystems
destroyed in the stampede for fossil fuels, in economies collapsing under the
weight of inequality, in cultures cut off from their roots, in communities that
are repressed and brutalized. We live in a country where deaths from white
supremacist guns remain the most frequent and deadliest form of terrorism.

I’m
not going to lie. In this moment I feel afraid for my daughter and for all our
kids.

As
someone who believes another world is possible I ask myself: what do I do in
this moment? What do we do? What does movement building look like in a time of
terror? How do we develop strategy in a world that’s animated by fear?

I
am grateful to come to these questions grounded in years of work by the Movement Strategy Center with
political strategist and Zen teacher Norma Wong, and with dozens of inspiring leaders in what we
call “Transitions Labs.” The Labs are designed to explore how we
can transition from a world of domination, violence and extraction to a
regenerative world of interdependence and resilience.

But
the victims of violence have challenged racist reactions to terror in beautiful
ways, like the Parisians who held off anti-Muslim disruptors , or in the
words of the partner of Larry
Daniel Kaufman who died saving others in San Bernardino. In ways
filled with hope and possibility for change, the movement for Black lives
has shined a spotlight on the daily terror of police in Black
neighborhoods.

We
sometimes speak of our movements engaging in the ‘battle of ideas,’ a violent
concept with winners and losers armed with tools of analysis. We need to move
beyond this. If it was ever true that ideas moved masses of people, it
certainly isn’t now, as people grapple, individually and collectively, with
the powerful emotion of fear.

Every
single one of us needs to be healed enough and grounded enough to build and
create with anyone, even people who don’t share our ideas. We can no longer
seek to work only with those who are ‘like minded.’ We must, as Wong says, seek
to build with those who are ‘like-hearted.’

When
a white solo mom tells me angrily that I care more about Syrian refugees than
about her, I need to listen and engage, not tune out and dismiss. I need to
stand with integrity and find possibility in what our hearts share. I can’t do
than one of us can—if we’re triggered and reactive, or if we’re listening only
from our heads and not our hearts.

“We can’t accomplish anything without healing. For
me, any of the issues we deal with can come up with great policy strategies. If
they don’t have a framework presenting alternatives to the dominant
frame, if they don’t involve healing and reconciliation, then we’re back at
square one.”

Does
this mean we are nice but weak? No. It means we are smart enough to understand
that our collective existence on this planet depends on our mutuality and the humanity
of each and every one of us. It means we are courageous and bold enough to lead
and love even those who aren’t yet seeking our love and leadership.

Does
this mean we all stop working and go up to the mountain to meditate?
No. It means we start being aware and present right now, in
whatever we are doing. It means we start acknowledging, valuing, and embodying
what has, time and time again, over and over, worked. It means we start beingElla Baker and Grace Lee
Boggs and Nelson Mandela.

Movement
building grounded in love and purpose looks and feels different. It
takes a different set of muscles, including taking on intentional
practices as individuals and groups. Practice allows us to take small,
immediate steps to nurture shifts that are larger than we might imagine in the
present.

A
pianist runs through the scales daily, developing capacity that makes an entire
sonata possible. A runner puts in daily miles, developing muscle strength,
endurance, and memory that can be called on in a marathon. Conscious practice
can be applied in other areas of life, allowing us to cultivate new qualities
and capacities—and interrupt ingrained habits—even when we are
unsure or unclear about our future.

“Collective transformative practice is not some
hippy dippy thing. It’s about how we are together and how we are successful as
movements. This is how Black Lives Matter thinks about transformative
practice: It’s about transformative relationship building.”

“We
need embodied practice,” says Tomás Garduño, a leader at the nexus of climate and
economic justice who was part of the Transitions Lab community, “the conscious,
steady physical development of awareness that makes cooperation, connection,
compassion, and effective movement strategy possible.” He continues:

“Embodied practice is how we get to the “how.”
Embodied practice — whether it’s somatics or Forward Stance or just
breathing together — is how we proactively develop the strength, insight, and
joy to transform a world that includes the injustices of Ferguson and Ayotzinapa and Bhopal.”

Transformative
practice helps us get to transformative
strategy—to strategy
that generates leaps that seem unimaginable but are utterly necessary. As Wong
and others teach, what defines
transformative strategy is that it moves from the inside out.

It puts the qualities of who we are as
individuals and groups at the core. The possibilities
of this echo in the words of Rosa González, a champion of deep community democracy
who recently who recently helped groups impacted by the 2010 BP oil disaster
to articulate a collective commitment to the leadership, sustainable
livelihoods, health, and wholeness of frontline communities. In the Transitions
Lab Rosa told us: “We need to create space for people’s whole selves to show
up. Our linear logic says that the change people are visioning isn’t possible.
How do we expand what we believe? How do we hold space to allow for that?”

It moves with the depth of love and purpose of
those who identify as ready for transformation, while staying welcoming and open to those who aren’t. Jacqueline
Patterson, who leads the Environment & Climate Justice Program of
the NAACP, spoke to this in the Lab. “I’m working with communities to
move from the inside out, developing their own vision and modeling that.
Community by community we establish an approach until it becomes the norm.”

And it is open source
and nonlinear. “We need to get
beyond planning processes, to dream bigger,” said Nwamaka Agbo, leader of MSC’s Our Next Economy effort, in the Lab.
“Let’s not just make plans; let’s create the capacity to make them happen.”

This
kind of transformative strategy is what can generate leaps that currently
seem impossible: leaps
to food systems that
are healthy, affordable, fair to workers, good for the environment, and
keep farmers on the land.

Love,
community, and connection are the only things powerful enough to overcome fear
and terror. In the face of fear I choose love.

An earlier version of this article was first published on Let's Talk, the blog of the Movement Strategy Center.

About the author

Julie Quiroz is a senior fellow at the Movement Strategy Center in
Oakland, California, where she co-leads Transitions Labs and edits the Let’s Talk blog. She is a Voices of our Nation writer and is currently working on a novel.

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